Tech Storm Chaser Club To Take To Highways

By John Larson

SOCORRO - Students at New Mexico Tech will be hitting the highways again this spring and summer, but a select group will not be heading for sunshine and relaxation. Those few are members of the New Mexico Tech Storm Chaser Club, who will possibly be driving up to 600 miles in one day in the hopes of finding and photographing tornados.
Seth Price, President of the Storm Chaser Club, is in the process of forming this year’s crew.
“We’ll be having a meeting the first week of April,” Price said. “We’re looking for people who have the time to go out once a week, usually on weekends.”
He said the thing for him is the challenge of predicting where a tornado has the best chance of developing, which could be in eastern Colorado, or as far away as North Dakota or Louisiana.
“What you try to do is get up in the morning and figure out where you need to be by six that afternoon,” Price said. “We’re looking at about one third of the United States. The challenge is, can I make a forecast, and then follow through with it and see if it was right.”
He said there are no boundaries, but “we have to stay in the United States.
“Sometimes we drive 600 miles in a day to catch a storm,” Price said. “We’ve been as far north as the Dakotas and Wisconsin, and no further south than Interstate 10.”
Price said unlike the movie Twister, storm chasers try not to drive dirt roads to get close to a tornado.
“We usually stay on state roads, or at least paved roads,” he said. “One time in Kansas we went down a road of clay. It was wet and I found myself sliding off the road.”
He said the trips are fun, even if no tornado is sighted.
“We had a chase in 2004 where we did everything right and went to where storms could be,” he said. “The crew that year was great, even though we didn’t get a sighting.”
He said there’s a certain amount of pressure on him to find a storm.
“It’s takes a lot of skill, but there’s an element of art – and luck – to it,” Price said. “You can’t chase tornado warnings. You have to be there before that happens because the event may last only maybe one half hour at most.”
Price feels the club has a chance to contribute to public safety, if only in a small way.
“If we do see something, it’s being able to relay that information to the National Weather Service,” he said. “That may contribute a bit to increasing a warning time.”
He said that in the past the team has been able to assist after a tornado has struck, especially when cell phone service was down because of the weather.
“We went through an area that was recently hit with a tornado and people were still wandering around. Houses were hit,” he said. “There was no power or cell phone service. We were able to get in touch with police and emergency services through our radio.”
Price, a Lab Associate in the Chemical Engineering Department, said he has been fascinated with tornados for most of his life.
“I was inspired when I saw a Nova special in 1985 when I was four years old,” Price said. “Now I learn new stuff every time I go out. It’s one of the driving forces for going out every weekend.”

Tech Storm Chaser Club To Take To Highways